


for eternity a turn

by TechnicalTragedy



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, F/M, M/M, Not Really Character Death, One-Sided Relationship, Prophetic Dreams, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 16:17:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1716884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TechnicalTragedy/pseuds/TechnicalTragedy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I’ve had to die a thousand times, and I’ve had to live without you, and dying is much preferred."</p>
            </blockquote>





	for eternity a turn

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this](http://s2b2.livejournal.com/142934.html)

There was a God, once, and He was lonely, as a God should never be.

He turned to the Universe, and He told It, “I am alone.”

The Universe rippled in acknowledgement.

"I do not like being alone."

Another ripple, this one more thoughtful, and then a blinding light overtook His senses. He closed His eyes, to protect them.

When next He opened His eyes, another God stood before Him.

The Universe said, “This is to be your partner. You will stay together until You are no longer lonely, until You learn the lessons all of my other Children have had to learn during their lives.”

He blinked at It, and looked back at his Fellowgod. “I am being given a life?”

The Universe hummed. “You are being given lives. Lives to live with Your Fellowgod. And when You return to Me, however long it may take, You will release Him, and allow Him to learn His own lessons.”

He blinked again, but this time at His Fellowgod. “I will have to let Him go?”

"You will always have to let Him go," the Universe replied, "if You are lucky, He will return." As Its Voice faded from His mind, He closed His eyes and slept.

 

 

Mike Stamford walks into the lab, and you trail in after him. I glance up, scanning you quickly. You’re an army medic, or, you were one, just recently returned from a tour, probably unable to serve anymore if your cane is anything to go by. The limp’s psychosomatic, but whatever wound you do have definitely isn’t. You came from somewhere with a lot of sun, judging by your tan, so it must be Iraq or Afghanistan.

It’s then I notice the buzzing energy in my body at seeing you. I take another surreptitious once-over, and when I see your eyes I know it’s you.

We talk, and I can see some of you leaking through; your soul practically sings to me, reaching for me, and I find myself reaching back. You seem slightly off-put by my manner, like everyone is, but you’re different, and not just because you’re you. I don’t think you recognize me, but I’ve been wrong about that before.

"The name’s Sherlock Holmes, and the address is 221B Baker Street," I say, my pulse still racing at having found you once again. I wink, and turn to Mike Stamford. "Afternoon."

 

 

We settle into an almost-routine, comfortable with each other, and I feel that inevitable want and love for you growing with each passing day. It’s nearly domestic, for us, but then Moriarty happens, and my carefully-constructed life with you starts to crack.

When I fall, I can tell that it’s like you’re watching a train wreck, that no matter how much you wish to look elsewhere, you just can’t tear your eyes away from the tragedy unfolding before you.

Months later, in a cramped apartment in France that is nothing like 221B, I’ll wonder if perhaps I’ve made a mistake somewhere along the line.

It is there where I have the first dream.

It’s you, but not you. It’s you how I first witnessed you, shining and beautiful and a gift from the Universe Itself. But you’re drifting away, getting farther and farther from me when I reach for you, and I see that you’re headed towards something else. A grand, dark something else. Though I don’t know it at the time, this dark something is your fate.

 

 

In one universe, I am a dragon, and you are a hobbit. You do not love me in this universe, and I do not remember you. In another universe, we are both actors, friends. You are married, but not to me. In that universe we don’t love each other. In yet another universe, this universe, I am the world’s only consulting detective, and you were an army doctor who has managed to become my best friend. My only friend. In this universe, I love you. In this universe, you believe me to be dead. In this universe, I have made a mistake, and the only thing I don’t know is how to fix it.

 

 

When I come back you aren’t sure how to feel. You’re angry and sad and you hugged me when you first saw me, but now that we’re alone you’re angry again for some reason.

"You were dead," you spit, and the words seem to take shape, and start looping through my head."You were dead, and I mourned you. For two years I mourned you, and you’ve been alive this whole time?! Watching me, so close I could touch you?” You’re angry. Why are you angry? I’m alive, shouldn’t you be happy and relieved? “Why, Sherlock? Why did you do it?”

I sigh, and lean forward, drawn inexorably towards you as I’ve always been. “I wasn't here the whole two years. And I had to.”

You seem to be waiting for more. Why? Haven’t I told you everything you should need to know? “You had to.” Oh, you’re upset. Did that answer not meet your standards? “That’s it? You had to? You had to pretend to be dead, to let me believe you were dead, to mourn you, for two years? What could possibly be so important as to warrant that?”

I blink at you. Do you truly not know? “You.” Of course it would be you, John. What else? “I did it for you. To protect you.”

"Protect me?" Yes, I just said that. Were you not listening? "Protect me from what, Moriarty? He’s dead, Sherlock. He died that same day you did, up on Bart’s. You were there! He blew his own brains out!" You cannot possibly be this dim.

"Moriarty was the spider, John. He sat in the center of his web, of his vast network of criminal activity, and I have spent the last two years finding them all. I did it all for you." Yes. I did all of this for us, John. Now we can be together, and I won’t have to fake my death, and you won’t have to mourn, or miss me. We can go back to how we used to be, but I can have you how I want you. Can’t you see, John?

You’re staring at me. Confused. Surprised. Still angry, but less, now. “You did it for me. Sherlock, why would you- Is this another plot of yours? What do you want, coming back from the dead?”

Can you really not see? I’m shocked that you don’t know.

"You, John," I explain. "I want you."

 

 

I have another of the dreams that night, hours after you left in bewildered, unhappy silence. This one was worse than the last, and you were farther and farther, but I could reach for you ineffectually. It was torture, seeing you being drawn away from me and being powerless to stop it.

 

 

"Sherlock, why didn’t you…" Why didn’t I what, John? Profess my undying love for you? You should know me better than that by now, surely, what for all the lives we’ve been together. I thought you’d remember, that you were just biding your time until you told me you knew everything that’d transpired between us in all these other existences.

“If circumstances were different,” you begin, and I’m already dreading what will come out of your mouth next. “If circumstances were different,” you repeat, “we might’ve been.”

I don’t know why, but that hurts. These last few lives we’ve lived, the ones I remember as happening most recently, we didn’t have each other. You had Her, or you just didn’t remember. You never remember. Why is that? Is something fundamentally wrong with you, that you’re able to live all of these lives with me but never remember them? Or am I the flawed one? The one with a deformity? Perhaps.

I smile, and turn away from you. “Don’t mock me with what could’ve been, John.” The words aren’t meant to be venomous, but they are, and I can hear your silence as you try to think of something to say, something to make it better. When you can’t, you just leave.

 

 

"Did you love her?" You.

"Who?"

You huff at me. “The Woman. Irene Adler. Did you love her?”

No, John. I’ve always loved you. Only you.

"She loved you, I think," you say, without letting me answer. I suppose you didn’t want to know, after all.

I agree with you, though. I believe she did feel some measure of love towards me.

"I love Mary, you know." This causes me pause. Yes. Of course I understand that you love her. She loves you, too.

"We’re getting married. You’re the best man." Yes, John, I understand. You don’t love me.

Not the way I love you. Not the way you love Mary. Not the way the Woman loves me.

"I don’t know what you want from me, Sherlock. You have to tell me. I can’t deduce everything at a glance like you can." What I want? From you? I want many things from you, John. Things you are unable to give me; things I will not ask for.

"I want you to get married to Mary. To live with her in the suburbs. To have children with her and live in wedded bliss for the rest of your lives. That is what I want."

You don’t believe me, I know you don’t. But I’ve put you through so much in this life, in the short time we’ve known each other this time around. We have the rest of eternity to love each other, and you have this one, tiny life to love Mary Morstan, and that’s what makes this okay, that’s what makes everything bearable. Mary doesn’t get forever with you, like I do. She gets this one time. I’m willing to let Mary Morstan have John Watson. But I have more than that. I have so much more of you than she could ever even fathom.

You are mine. Completely and always mine. So she can think she has you, just this once.

Wait, no, that’s wrong. She’s had you before, once. When we were actors. You were married then, too. Strange. She’s more familiar to me than if it had just been once, though…

No matter. She will never have you again, after this life. I’ll make sure of it.

 

 

There’s another dream that night, and instead of the vacuum-like silence that had been in the last dreams, I can hear someone laughing at me. I still reach for you, but the laughing grows louder when I do.

"He is not Yours, He will never be Yours again," the Voice says as I wake up, and it sounds like Moriarty. "Sherlock’s dying, for good this time" It taunts, and when I open my eyes to my dark and empty room I’m left with dread curdling in the pit of my stomach.

At your wedding, I look over at you, and you’re staring at Mary. I see love in your eyes, and suddenly I understand, and the realization causes my breath to catch in my throat.

I’m not coming back, am I? That’s what all those strange dreams meant, that’s why we’re suddenly seeing Her in our lifetimes. This’ll probably be my last run. After this… You’ll have Her, and you won’t even remember me.

I should tell you about us. About the lives we’ve lived together, and loved each other. You would think I’m crazy, crazier than I already am. But at least I would’ve told you.

For now, I watch John Watson watch Mary Morstan, and I feel my heart break.

 

It’s revealed that I’m dying a month or a week later. I don’t know which, time is hard to keep up with these days. You stormed over here when you heard the news, and begged me to tell you it wasn’t true. Since getting the news myself, a strange sort of apathy had settled over me, and you hated my uncaring silence, so you raged at me, finally resorting to hitting me once and then leaving again.

After a while of sitting in the too-quiet, I looked over the diagnosis again, blinked once, and then headed out to acquire the kind of drugs I hadn’t done in what felt like an entire lifetime.

More time passed, time that I was not entirely aware of, but then at some point you showed up, and you were mad again, but not as mad as you were when you learned of my impending death. You’re still angry with me, but I think you understand why I went back to drugs.

I haven’t been out of the flat in three days now, and neither have you. Mycroft came to visit, but you kicked him out. Instead of the constant nothing I felt in your absence, warmth is blooming in my chest again, like a flower opening up in the springtime thaw. You notice it, of course, how my smiles are returning, rare as ever, and how I let you do basically whatever you want without complaint.

If you don’t already know, then you at least suspect.

 

 

"Are you in love with me?"

I sigh, but don’t answer. It’s finally come.

"Did you-" you begin.

"Yes."

I can feel your eyes on me.

It is silent, as if the world has ceased its noise and is hanging onto our every word.

"I didn’t know," you say. Of course you didn’t. Why would you have known?

"I know," I reply.

"If I’d known… If you’d told me-"

"Don’t," I interrupt. "I can’t do this again."

"Do what? Do what again?" You’re confused. You don’t remember.

"We’ve had this conversation before, you know. You don’t remember, because you never do, but I could never forget you."

"What are you talking about?"

I sigh. I shouldn’t have said anything. “It doesn’t matter. Just know that I’m going to miss you. You’ve been my only friend for… eons.”

"It sure feels like that, doesn’t it?" you murmur absently, and I find myself smiling.

After a long moment of silence, you say, “Maybe in another life I could’ve loved you.”

Hysterical, desperate laughter bubbles out of me, and it startles you.

"What? What’s so funny?" you ask, sounding worried.

I shake my head, coughing a bit as I compose myself. “Maybe in another life,” I agree, grinning.

I love you more in this moment than I have in any other lifetime.

I’m going to miss you so much.

 

 

My condition has been declining, and I’m as bad as I’m going to get now. One would assume I would recover, after hitting rock bottom, but in my case, I’m just going to get dragged along the ground until I eventually give in.

I can’t move my legs, but my arms are still partly working. You haven’t left my side ever since I was condemned to laying in bed for the rest of my short existence, and if you have, it’s been in the nineteen or so hours a day that I’m asleep. Just thinking wears away at my energy, and I think I talk to you sometimes, though I don’t remember making any noise for at least a week.

When I do think, it's mostly broken bits and pieces, reflections on the lives we've lived. I wonder if you remember the freckled boy with crooked teeth who admitted he loved you in the third grade. I wonder if you remember the starving girl who wasted away in your arms during the Great Chinese Famine. I wonder if you ever get glimpses of who we've been, how we've loved each other. I wonder if you'll hold me as I die, in this final spin of our cycle.

I think I’ll go back to sleep now.

 

"I saw you," I whisper into the dark. I don’t know what possesses me to do so, but I find that I have to tell you everything before I go.

"What?" you whisper back.

I struggle to sit up, find that I can’t, and locate a shape that looks like you in the gloom.

"I saw you, the first life we had together. I saw you, and I knew you were it. I knew you were mine. I saw you. I introduced myself, and we got coffee. The first time I met you, was on the twentieth of October, in the year 2013. The next life you were a Roman gladiator and I was a slave. I saw you, and I knew it was you. Over the lives, we’ve been pirates and aliens and centaurs and kings and queens and animals, but mostly we’ve been us. In lives, I’ve seen you, and I’ve known you. You don’t change much, you know that? From life to life, you haven’t changed much. Your shape has been altered, and your name, but you’ve always been you. I, unfortunately, have always been me. Not quite as smart every time, but me." I pause, allow myself to smile. "Sometimes, I don’t remember you. I see you, but I don’t make the connection. Those lives are hard. I want to die in those lives, I wish they’d never happened."

 

"You want to die?" you ask, concerned.

 

"I would rather die a thousand times than to go through a single life without you. Trust me, I’ve had to die a thousand times, and I’ve had to live without you, and dying is much preferred. You… You make everything better. Lives without you are empty. We learn lessons, in each of these lives. The first lesson was love, but that’s something we’ve been working on. Something I’ve been working on. You always understood love, and I never did. I still don’t. All I know about love is that I would chase you across universes, have chased you across universes, and that even if we don’t end up together, your happiness takes precedence over everything.” I look down at my hands, which seem to be much skinnier than when last I saw them.

"Sherlock…"

I hold my slim fingers up with a Herculean effort, stopping you. “I’m not yet finished.” I pause to recollect my thoughts. “That’s all ending. This… thing that my brain is doing. Ripping itself apart, basically. I’ve been having dreams. The end of times is upon me. When I die this time, I won’t be coming back for you. It seems the universe has decided that She, that the woman you know as Mary Morstan, will be with you for forever now. I’ll go wherever it is souls go when they perish. I suppose I’ll be waiting for you for the rest of eternity.” I can feel the fog descending on my mind, the one I know brings about unconsciousness and unbearable pain, so I fight against it. I’ve got to finish telling you our story.

"You never remember, John!" I grit out. "You never remember, and it hurts every time, but I understand." Now, the threat of passing out has gone. "I understand. I suppose it was too much to ask for, that I could have you and have you remember, as well." I reach out blindly towards your hand, resting on the armrest, ending up barely brushing the tip of my middle finger against yours. I settle my hand down, and maintain the contact. I have no energy left after the monstrous effort that took. "I’ll miss you. I already do."

There is a long silence, and then you move your hand, to drape your fingers over mine.

"Do you know why it happened? Why we got stuck together like that?" you ask.

I sigh. “It’s a question I ask myself often. I know that there was something before what I call the first time I saw you. But it’s like a black hole, and if I try and poke at it I think it might destroy my mind. I’ve been picking at it a lot lately. I figure if my mind’s already self-destructing, why not just speed up the process, and perhaps find the answer to the greatest question in my existence at the same time?”

Your index finger taps my pinky. “Why haven’t you, then?”

"I was waiting to tell you all of this. I don’t know when I’ll next have the opportunity to do so."

I can see your slight nod, even cloaked in shadows as you are.

"Well, I’m sorry, Sherlock."

"Sorry for what?" What do you have to be sorry for?

You look over at me. “I’m sorry you’ve gotten to this point.”

I don’t understand what you’re getting at. “What point am I at?”

You sigh, and your fingers stroke absently over mine. “The point where your mind is doing this to you, making you believe in these delusions of different lives spent with me.”

I feel a horrible chill ghost over my skin. “You don’t believe me,” I breathe.

Instead of answering, you sigh again, and stand, leaving my hand stretched out, still feeling your warmth. The cold seeps into my flesh. “Goodnight, Sherlock. Mary was expecting me back half an hour ago, so I should be on my way.” You head towards the door. It’ll be the first time you’ve left since I got sick. You’ve given up, I suppose. Maybe I should, too.

"John," I say, and you glance back at me. I smile through the frost growing on my lips. "I love you." I feel icy tendrils reach my heart, my soul. "Goodbye."

You look confused, but nod.

Several things happen at once, after that.

1) The door closes behind you with a soft click that seems to echo in this empty room

2) I exhale

3) I tug at the black hole in my head

4) My mind explodes into eyes and smiles and hands and you, you, you,

5) I remember, and

6) I know what I have to do.

 

 

October 20, 2013

A man walks down a street.

He’s headed for a coffee shop, needing his morning cup before he can fully function.

When he’s finally in the queue, he glances around the shop, and locks eyes with someone halfway across it.

It’s like electricity zapping between them, and when he has his coffee, the man heads over to their table, gesturing to the empty chair.

"Mind if I sit?" he asks, grinning.

Pale green eyes look up at him, and full lips twitch up into a smile. “I don’t mind at all, but I’m running late for class, and I think you’d be much more interested in having a coffee with” Green Eyes stands, and extends a hand towards a pretty woman just stepping away from the counter, “her.”

"You could just say you aren’t interested, you know," the man grumbles, and Green Eyes smiles again.

"I am interested. But you should have coffee with her. I’m late for class. If you come back tomorrow, a little earlier, maybe, we can have coffee then. But for now, why don’t you sit down with her."

The man’s brow furrows, but he nods. “As long as we have coffee tomorrow.”

Green Eyes smiles yet again, nods, and heads off. The man approaches the woman, and asks to sit with her. She says yes, of course he can sit with her.

They shake hands, introduce themselves.

A God in the form of a green-eyed man watches them as they converse, and smiles as they make plans to see each other again.

The man forgets about going back to the coffee shop the next day, and a green-eyed God sits at a table with cold coffee in front of him, hoping the man won’t show up but also desperately wishing he would.

When the green-eyed man is finally asked to leave, he simply nods, collects his things, and goes, disappearing once he’s turned the corner.

Alone, the God returns to His realm, and though He knows He’s done the right thing, His Soul doesn’t let up Its constant ache. He settles in for a long wait, until His partner has learned what He has, and returns to Him.

When He finally does return, the two smile and join hands, and run across the Universe, where there is no Jim Moriarty, no Mary Morstan, and no Fall, just the two of Them against the Rest of the Universe, with Forever on Their side.


End file.
